Swiss Army Man

David Jenk­ins: So this is a con­ver­sa­tion review of Swiss Army Man, which is com­ing out in the UK on 30 Sep­tem­ber. It’s direct­ed by two guys called Daniel Kwan and Daniel Schein­ert, who have styled them­selves as ​‘Daniels’. The film is essen­tial­ly a para­ble about a guy, played by Paul Dano, who has washed up on a desert island. We meet him at the point where he’s about to hang him­self. Then, just out of the cor­ner of his eye, he sees a corpse wash up on the beach in front of him, which hap­pens to be played by Daniel Rad­cliffe. The film is a series of sketch­es about the ways in which this corpse played by Daniel Rad­cliffe helps Paul Dano to sur­vive and re-enter civilisation.

Adam Wood­ward: We should add at this point that the gim­mick of the movie is that the Daniel Rad­cliffe corpse pass­es wind a lot. This device is used through­out the film – there’s a scene involv­ing fart-pro­pelled jet-ski­ing… My first ques­tion is, is this a comedy?

DJ: This has become the sales hook for the film. It’s ​‘the Daniel Rad­cliffe Fart­ing Corpse Film’. I guess the rea­son for doing this con­ver­sa­tion review is, the film is an inti­mate two-han­der between Rad­cliffe and Dano and it pro­gress­es from the gim­mick of the ​“Swiss-army” corpse to… some­thing else. It loops around a lot, and by the end it jus­ti­fies the farts.

AW: Full dis­clo­sure: I didn’t real­ly get any­thing out of it, apart from the slight­ly ran­dom Shane Car­ruth cameo at the end. But I did have this sense that it will prob­a­bly be someone’s favourite movie. I want to try and get to the root of that.

DJ: I agree. I don’t think anyone’s actu­al­ly going to ​‘like’ this movie. But I think it’s going to be a film that peo­ple are going to want to talk about. I mean, the one thing I often think about when watch­ing films like this is: how and why did this get made? From the start of the film I was pon­der­ing, ​‘Wow, there’s some real­ly deep-pock­et­ed investors out there who just want to give mon­ey to quite a sil­ly film.’ Throw cau­tion to the wind. My dis­ap­point­ment came out of the fact that as the film goes on, it becomes more obvi­ous why some­one would pay to make it. Which, for me, is its downfall.

AW: Yeah. Just to go back a lit­tle bit – when you say that the corpse is played by Daniel Rad­cliffe, it’s worth not­ing that he is act­ing in this movie quite a bit.

DJ: Is that a spoiler?

AW: I don’t think so. It’s more to say that it’s not Week­end at Bernie’s. There’s more to it than meets the eye. I think it’s impor­tant to say, it’s not in the trail­er any­where, but it kind of feeds into the film’s hyper-real­ism, and that was the thing I couldn’t real­ly get past. Not so much that is was going for this hyper-real tone and aes­thet­ic, but that it jars so heav­i­ly with the film that it becomes.

DJ: The Daniels use Daniel Rad­cliffe as a rea­son for Paul Dano’s char­ac­ter to exist. We nev­er know why he’s on this island. You sus­pect right from the begin­ning that this isn’t a lit­er­al depic­tion of a cast-away. But Rad­cliffe is this sound­ing board for Dano to basi­cal­ly talk about his world­view and air all his trou­bles and anx­i­eties. And it all just gets a bit, ugh….

AW: It’s also a kind of road movie. They go on this big jour­ney togeth­er… If it was them just on this desert island, I don’t know I think it would be enough to make a film from.

DJ: There are points where, almost by neces­si­ty rather than need, it turns into a sort of slight­ly Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry kind of thing.

AW: It wants to take you on this big jour­ney, this fan­tas­tic voy­age, and I felt like the des­ti­na­tion just wasn’t worth it. And it’s not just the fart­ing, there’s a lot of phys­i­cal com­e­dy and slap­stick stuff here, but at the same time it’s striv­ing to hit this euphor­ic peak. I’m not sure whether M83 are even on the sound­track, but it feels very superficial.

DJ: You def­i­nite­ly get the feel­ing that the Daniels have earned their spurs in some area of the film­mak­ing indus­try. They’ve been giv­en a pass to do their crazy mad film.

AW: It’s refresh­ing to see two decent actors and a big film com­pa­ny back­ing a film like this, which is a real­ly orig­i­nal idea. It feels like they’ve been allowed to make the kind of film they want­ed to make.

DJ: I agree. This could be a case study for when we talk about how there’s noth­ing on at the cin­e­ma, it’s all the same kind of mid­dle-brow cos­tume dra­ma or what­ev­er. This is some­thing dif­fer­ent, for bet­ter and for worse. A mid­night movie that rose above its station.

AW: Per­son­al­ly it didn’t jive with me, but then I didn’t think it was very fun­ny or very fun. Every­thing is telling you that that’s what it is, but there’s some­thing, I don’t know what it is, a disconnect?

DJ: A ​‘pleased with itself’ vibe, espe­cial­ly the open­ing cred­its – the scene in which fart­ing Daniel Rad­cliffe becomes a jet-ski and gets Paul Dano back to the main­land. That shot is filmed in slo-mo, and it’s kind of a shame because it’s basi­cal­ly the best shot in the film and it’s over in the first five min­utes. It’s prob­a­bly already a gif.

AW: With­out ruin­ing any­thing for any­one who hasn’t seen the film who wants to see it, what did you think of the end­ing? It left me with a sour taste. I think it’s a def­i­nite­ly case of want­i­ng to have its cake and eat it by try­ing to inject a bit of pathos at the end. I left real­ly not lik­ing Paul Dano’s character.

DJ: To be hon­est, not that lik­ing or dis­lik­ing is an inher­ent­ly good or bad thing, but I kind of felt indif­fer­ent towards it.

AW: Which is arguably even worse… It’s a film which needs a mes­sage and I just don’t think that comes through.

DJ: I think the mes­sage is: ​‘We all fart’ And that’s it.